


Viewpoint

by peacensafety



Series: Valhalla [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:16:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacensafety/pseuds/peacensafety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This series started because of the Teen Wolf fanfic contest. Since I didn't win, I figured I'd post what I wrote for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Viewpoint

Sheriff Stilinski sat at the desk in his office for a few more minutes before walking over to the gun cabinet. He glanced around, checking to make sure that the rest of the force was concentrating on something else before he leaned down to remove the false bottom of the cabinet. It had been almost twenty years since he had closed that panel with then-Sheriff Finstock after promising to not open it again. Stilinski had sworn that he wouldn’t go back.

Stilinski thought that he had buried this, put it all behind him, and years ago when the Hale House had burned and the last of the werewolves had left, he thought that he would never need to worry about it again. It was part of his past, and he could move on and not worry about a single thing dealing with the supernatural ever again. 

He was wrong. It had been obvious for almost a year that things had not been normal in Beacon Hills.

The plywood covering was stuck, and he had to pound a little on the back corner to move it. The false bottom flew up, filling the air with dust that forced him to hold back a sneeze. It was cloying, but laying there covered in neglect was the old leather bound book that had been given to him on his sixteenth birthday, as it had been given to his father and his grandfather before him. He wiped the cover free of dirt, and in burnt letters, the word Staliński stared back up at him, accusing him of inaction and a lack of responsibility. He was certain he was guilty, and his family would have been ashamed of him.

Not that he wanted to drag his family into this. He had protected his son from their family legacy for this long, why would he encourage something that would only get his child killed? 

He knew he should have called them the first time the Argents showed up in Beacon Hills, knew who and what they were the moment he laid eyes on them. The Argent family was famous in certain circles, despised in most because of how unsubtle they were. They always left trails of destruction in their wake, and the Hale House was only the beginning. 

Stilinski should have called, but he was distracted with his wife dying, with being alone for the first time in his life and being the only one responsible for Stiles. Christ, how tempted he had been to just take Stiles and run, to keep his son as far away from this as he could. He knew where it inevitably led, but he didn’t want Stiles to have the kind of childhood that he himself had. He wanted Stiles to feel like he had roots in a place, instead of living from seedy motel room to seedy motel room. He knew what the life of a hunter involved, and Stiles was too delicate to live that particular nightmare. 

The Argents though, they were too flashy and attention starved. They felt like they were providing a service and they should be treated like heroes. They didn’t understand the first thing about hunting. Not like the Staliński Family. He had spent most of his time covering up the crap that they kept pulling in Beacon Hills. They had to think that he was a complete idiot, even a complete mundane would have caught on to what they were doing. Their attempts to keep things quiet were so lame that his son, Stiles, had obviously caught on to what was going on. They had been caught by a sixteen year old kid. Stilinski smirked to himself, wondering if it was just Stiles’s natural propensity to being nosy or if genetically he was inclined to figure these things out like the Staliński Family had done for generations.

After hiding the secret compartment once again, he sat back at his desk and opened the book. He flipped through the pages covered in the Cyrillic alphabet, wincing at how rusty his Russian had become. He wondered if he shouldn’t just leave the book out for Stiles to find, precluding any conversation that Stiles would find necessary. Maybe he should leave it on the kitchen table at home, halfway covered in a mess of paperwork inspired by the latest Argent chaos. He wiped a hand over his face, wondering if there was any way to keep Stiles out of the Family, and giving up because he knew that Stiles would eventually figure out that everything about his dad’s history, up to and including the spelling of their last name, was entirely fabricated.

The book detailed hunting monsters. It dated all the way back to the official position they held in the mothercountry under czars and later under Lenin and Stalin, who had changed their name, and into this century. Right at the end of the Cold War as a tentative show of trust between the American and Russian governments, the CIA had requested the Family’s help in taking care of an issue in Arizona. Stilinski had agreed to go, eager to be on his own, never expecting to fall in love with a CIA operative and stay in this country. Hiding that information had been incredibly easy for Stiles’s mother when they moved to Beacon Hills, and the CIA didn’t seem to mind when they had chosen this town to stay in and start a family. They left him alone, and that respect was what had kept the FBI out of Beacon Hills even with the insane rash of murders had happened this past year. Stiles had to have figured out that it was weird that the murder rate rocketing like that hadn’t pulled in federal curiosity. 

“Hey dad,” Stiles stuck his head in, and Stilinski had to smile at his son’s face, so much like his mother’s. 

“Stiles,” he stood, finding humor that his son had instinctively even hidden his name from even his best friends. He wondered if that was a trait that he inherited, also. 

“We going shooting today?” Stiles asked. 

“I’m getting recertified soon, might as well get some practice in,” Stilinski said, walking over to the cabinet this time to pull out a few rifles and two pistols. He saw Stiles, out of the corner of his eye, spy the book laying on his desk. Stiles’s eyes got wider as he read the old name on it, and Stilinski had to roll his eyes just a little bit when Stiles put it inside of his jacket before coming over to help his dad with the guns. 

The outdoor rifle range was the only place Stilinski had ever seen his son quiet, and the boy listened closely to everything he had to say. Teaching Stiles to respect the weapons he was using had been easy, and watching his son turn from a klutzy child into a klutzy teenager had always been somewhat of a shock to him after seeing him with a gun in his hand. He was always so self-assured on the range, and Stilinski had to admit that he had his mother’s aim when he was holding a weapon. 

He missed Stiles’s mother, missed her every single day, and it was something that he would never get over. He still wouldn’t take their son back to Russia with him, knowing that it was something that she would never want: their son immediately being used by the Russian government to take care of supernatural problems so that they could continue to pretend that they didn’t exist. Stiles would make a frightening assassin, but Stilinski knew that it would destroy his son.

“Dad?” Stiles asked. Stilinski wondered if he was going to start the conversation, wondering if Stiles would have enough guts to go through with it this time.

Stilinski grunted a little to acknowledge he was listening, not wanting to scare his son off, but not wanting to really encourage it, either. It was past time for him to come clean about their history, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to enjoy being a normal family for just a little longer.

“Dad, what if I were to tell you that something weird is happening in Beacon Hills?”

“It wouldn’t really be that surprising,” Stilinski said, reloading the rifle with speed and efficiency that had the other officers look at him, old suspicion burning in their eyes. 

Stiles loaded in much the same way as his father, and then settled the rifle against his shoulder, tucking it tightly. He emptied the chamber, scoring higher than most of the other officers, before he looked back at his dad with his mother’s eyes. “Dad, there is something that you might not understand about what’s happening here, and I think that I should tell you…”

Stilinski stared at his son with a sinking heart. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to have to start training Stiles the way he had been trained. He didn’t want to confess that he had known all along about the supernatural, because if he did that, he might have to confess that he knew what the Argents were up to when they had come to town and the killings had begun. He didn’t want to admit that instead of throwing them out of town, he had chosen to concentrate on his wife dying and protecting his son from that life. 

He pulled a tactic that he knew Stiles employed on a regular basis, ignoring something until it eventually went away. 

“Stiles, would telling me this endanger any of your friends?” Stilinski asked.

“Well…”

“Would you be breaking a confidence? You understand that I’m the Sheriff, and anything strange happening in my town would require me to take care of it?”

“Dad…”

“Would not telling me something cover up or make you an accomplice to anything illegal?”

That stopped Stiles for a moment.

“If there is anything that you think I should know, perhaps you should let me discover it in my investigations into anything strange happening in this town. This way, I don’t have to place my own son under arrest if I can’t find that he had little to nothing to do with the strange happenings under my jurisdiction,” and with that being said, he emptied his rifle into the target. 

He didn’t mention that if Stiles found himself in too much trouble, Russian and American governments be damned, he was packing Stiles up with whatever basic necessities they needed and they heading right back to the motherland. 

Stiles was quiet for the ride home, and Stilinski wondered briefly if he had said too much. A quiet Stiles was a dangerous Stiles, because that meant the boy was thinking. Stilinski hated it when his son was thinking. He tried not to shudder with dread every time Stiles’s hand reached into his coat to stroke the book he had been carrying around.

When they pulled up at their house, there was already a car in the driveway. Stilinski stared at the black Camaro with a sort of dread. Stiles was already out of the car, bounding across the front yard to talk to Derek, who was waiting on the front porch. They had a hushed conversation quickly.

Stilinski wiped the handkerchief he dragged out of his glove compartment on his neck and face before he got out of the car that he kept wrapped around some herbs before putting it back into his glove compartment. Those herbs would throw off a werewolf’s scent, and that was important. It wouldn’t help anything if the werewolf could smell his guilt, if Derek knew that he held himself responsible for not doing anything about the Argents when they were here the first time.

“Hale,” Stilinski greeted Derek.

“Sheriff,” Derek nodded his head back, his eyes so much older than what they should have been on his face. Stilinski could remember when the young werewolf always had a smile on his face. 

“You here for dinner?” Stilinski asked him, unlocking the front door.

Derek looked surprised, and then he looked at Stiles. “No, just wanted to ask Stiles a question.”

Stilinski nodded. “All right. Come in when you’re finished, Stiles.” He wondered if Stiles would ever figure out that it wasn’t that he didn’t care, but that he was trying to protect Stiles from what he knew.

Stiles looked at his father, a little confused. “Okay, dad,” he said, and Stilinski walked back into the house.

The phone rang as he walked through the door, and Stilinski moved quickly to answer it. 

“Zdravstvuj,” the voice on the other end of the phone greeted him.

The sheriff turned on the faucet, letting water pour into the empty sink. He moved into the living room. “Hello,” he said back in Russian. He hoped the running water was enough to counter Derek’s werewolf hearing, but he had no idea how powerful Derek was. He had dealt with Alphas who were at all levels of power before, and he hadn’t enough time to assess Derek’s abilities yet.

“It’s been a long time,” the voice said, “one would almost think that you are hiding.” The voice was distinctive, a sour blend of whiskey and gravel that Stilinski immediately recognized. He didn’t want to hear from this man for the rest of his life, but apparently his wishes were going to be ignored.

“One would be right,” Stilinski answered, disguising the disgust and terror he was feeling. “Make this quick.”

“Your little hidey hole is about to be visited by a pack of Alphas,” the voice said.

“A Pack…” Stilinski asked. “Not…”

“Oh yes, it’s them,” the voice said. “I was just giving you a head’s up. Also, you aren’t the only one that the American government has been hiding in that little town. You know Alain Lafourche?”

“I knew of him; I never met the man in person,” Stilinski said.

“He goes by Deaton now.”

The vet. Stilinski knew that there was something up with him. He was too vague in answering any of his questions. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. “Why are you calling me with information now? It’s been almost twenty years.”

“If things get any more insane there, we’re thinking about coming for a visit,” the voice said, and Stilinski felt his heart grow cold. 

“Stay away from Beacon Hills,” he hissed, “or “I will end you.”

“What do you have to hide?” the voice asked.

Stilinski hung the phone up before anything else could be said, and he stared as Stiles walked into the room from the front porch. That was what he had to hide, and he would do anything to keep his son safe. 

“What was all that about?” Stilinski asked his son before Stiles could say anything.

Stiles frowned at the running water before he walked over and turned it off. “A bunch of teenage stuff, dad. You wouldn’t understand.”

The sheriff nodded, he remembered what it was like to be a teenager, feeling no adult would ever understand what was going on in their lives. He wished that was true, wished it with all his heart. He walked over to pull food out of the freezer. It was almost empty. “Did you and Scott eat everything in here?”

Stiles grinned a little sheepishly. “Sorry dad.”

Dinner that night was a hodgepodge of foods that shouldn’t have ever gone together. Burritos and chicken fried rice and asparagus led to gastrointestinal distress. 

Stiles seemed strangely reluctant to leave his dad’s side. “When did you start speaking Russian?”

Werewolf hearing, Stilinski thought to himself, figuring that Derek was a little more powerful than he assumed. “A while ago,” he said vaguely, turning the television on.

“You left this book on your desk,” Stiles said, pulling it out of his jacket. “You read Russian, too?”

Stilinski looked over at his son. If they were getting visitors soon, maybe it was time to start opening up. “Stiles…”

“I just thought that our last name was spelled wrong because of a mix up at Ellis Island. Apparently, no one could spell there, but we didn’t come through Ellis Island, did we dad?” Stiles held his father’s gaze with an intensity that Stilinski recognized from his own father’s eyes.

“No,” he said, wishing fate would give him just a little more time to be a normal family with Stiles. “No we didn’t.”

“I don’t know anyone who reads Russian,” Stiles continued, “So I think that maybe you need to go through this book with me.”

Stilinski snorted. “You could find someone to translate Archaic Latin, but Russian is a stumbling block for you?”

“How did you know about…”

Stilinski sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Son, be careful about what questions you want me to answer. I don’t think you want to know everything you’re asking.”

Stiles was quiet for a moment more. “Let me think, dad,” he said, getting up from the couch. 

“You probably don’t want to talk about this with your friends,” Stilinski said. “Especially Allison and Derek.”

Stiles looked startled. He stared at his dad for a little longer, and then he walked off to his bedroom. Stilinski decided it was a good time to pull out his bottle of Jack.


End file.
